The pressures of rapid urbanization and economic growth in Asia and the Pacific have resulted in growing
numbers of evictions of urban poor from their neighbourhoods. In most cases they are relocated to
peripheral areas far from centres of employment and economic opportunities. At the same time over
500 million people now live in slums and squatter settlements in Asia and the Pacific region and this
figure is rising.
Local governments need policy instruments to protect the housing rights of the urban poor as a critical
first step towards attaining the Millennium Development Goal on significant improvement in the lives of
slum-dwellers by 2020. The objective of these Quick Guides is to improve the understanding by policy
makers at national and local levels on pro-poor housing and urban development within the framework
of urban poverty reduction.
The Quick Guides are presented in an easy-to-read format structured to include an overview of trends
and conditions, concepts, policies, tools and recommendations in dealing with the following housingrelated issues:
(1) Urbanization: The role the poor play in urban development (2) Low-income housing: Approaches
to help the urban poor find adequate accommodation (3) Land: A crucial element in housing the urban
poor (4) Eviction: Alternatives to the whole-scale destruction of urban poor communities (5) Housing
finance: Ways to help the poor pay for housing (6) Community-based organizations: The poor as
agents of development (7) Rental housing: A much neglected housing option for the poor.

This Quick Guide 5 introduces some of the key concepts of formal housing finance and an
overview of how both the formal and informal systems of delivering housing finance work,
especially with regard to the urban poor. The guide provides insights to innovative ways in
affordable housing finance for the urban poor living in Asiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities.

housing
the poor
in Asian
cities
HOUSING FINANCE: Ways to
help the poor pay for housing

Copyright ÂŠ United Nations Human Settlements Programme and
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2008
ISBN: 978-92-113-1944-6
HS/957/08E Housing the Poor in Asian Cities, Quick guide 5
DISCLAIMER
The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression
of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of
any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries
regarding its economic system or degree of development. The analysis, conclusions and recommendations
of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of United Nations or its member states. Excerpts may
be reproduced without authorization, on condition that the source is indicated.
Cover design by Tom Kerr, ACHR and printed in Nairobi by the United Nations Office at Nairobi
Cover photo by Asian coalition for Housing Rights
The publication of the Housing the Poor in Asian cities series was made possible through the financial support
of the Dutch Government and the Development Account of the United Nations.
Published by:
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)
Rajdamnern Nok Avenue
Bangkok 10200, Thailand
Fax: (66-2) 288 1056/1097
E-mail: escap-esdd-oc@un.org
Web: www.unescap.org
and
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT)
P.O.Box 30030 GPO 00100
Nairobi, Kenya
Fax: (254-20) 7623092
E-mail: tcbb@unhabitat.org
Web: www.unhabitat.org

Acknowledgements
This set of seven Quick Guides have been prepared as a result of an expert group meeting
on capacity-building for housing the urban poor, organized by UNESCAP in Thailand in July
2005. They were prepared jointly by the Poverty and Development Division of UNESCAP
and the Training and Capacity Building Branch (TCBB) of UN-HABITAT, with funding from the
Development Account of the United Nations and the Dutch Government under the projects
“Housing the Poor in Urban Economies” and “Strengthening National Training Capabilities
for Better Local Governance and Urban Development” respectively. An accompanying set
of posters highlighting the key messages from each of the Quick Guides and a set of selfadministered on-line training modules are also being developed under this collaboration.
The Quick Guides were produced under the overall coordination of Mr. Adnan Aliani, Poverty
and Development Division, UNESCAP and Ms. Åsa Jonsson, Training and Capacity Building
Branch, UN-HABITAT with vital support and inputs from Mr. Yap Kioe Sheng, Mr. Raf Tuts
and Ms. Natalja Wehmer. Internal reviews and contributions were also provided by Ms.
Clarissa Augustinus, Mr. Jean-Yves Barcelo, Mr. Selman Erguden, Mr. Solomon Haile, Mr.
Jan Meeuwissen, Mr. Rasmus Precht, Ms. Lowie Rosales, and Mr. Xing Zhang.
The Guides were prepared by Mr. Thomas A. Kerr, Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR)
based on documents prepared by Mr. Babar Mumtaz, Mr. Michael Mattingly and Mr. Patrick
Wakely, formerly of the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College of London; Mr.
Yap Kioe Sheng, UNESCAP; Mr. Aman Mehta, Sinclair Knight Merz Consulting; Mr. Peter
Swan, Asian Coalition for Housing Rights; and Mr. Koen Dewandeler, King Mongkut Institute
of Technology, Thailand.
The original documents and other materials can be accessed at: www.housing-the-urbanpoor.net.
The above contributions have all shaped the Quick Guide series, which we hope will contribute to the daily work of policy makers in Asia in their quest to improve housing for the
urban poor.

One community dollar
equals a thousand
development dollars. Why?
Because that community
dollar represents the
commitment of thousands
of poor people to their
own development. When
development comes from
people’s own savings it is
theirs, they own it.

Housing finance: Ways
to help the poor pay for
housing
QUICK GUIDE FOR POLICYMAKERS NUMBER 5
The objective of this Quick Guide is to introduce some of the key concepts of housing
finance and to provide a quick overview of how housing finance works, especially
as it relates — or fails to relate — to the urban poor. The guide presents information about both the formal and informal systems of delivering housing finance, and
examines the key advantages and drawbacks of both systems when it comes to
directing housing finance to the city’s poor.
The basic mechanisms of formal and informal housing finance systems may be
similar, but by removing many of the barriers that make the formal system inaccessible to the poor, the informal system has in many places become the chief system
for delivering what meager housing finance does actually reach the poor. The guide
closes with a brief description of some new and unconventional housing finance
strategies being tested and expanded in Asia, which are attempting to link formal
sources of finance with poor communities and the informal systems by which they
live their lives and build their housing.
This guide is not aimed at specialists, but instead aims to help build the capacities
of national and local government officials and policy makers who need to quickly
enhance their understanding of low-income housing issues.
QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

CONDITIONS

Housing mismatches:

PHOTO: ACHR

PHOTO
4-A

So far, no system in the world
has been able to perfectly
match the great variety of
housing needs with actual
housing production. There is
almost always either a surplus
or a shortage, and many
households end up having to
live in housing that is not quite
what they need, what they want
or what they can afford.

Housing conditions and
the need for housing finance
Housing comes in all shapes and sizes, including
blocks of low, medium or high-rise flats, rental
rooms, row-houses and free-standing houses.
To accommodate a wide range of housing needs
and a growing population over time, a city needs
to provide a steady supply of new housing and
expand the existing housing supply. Housing which
grows too old or too deteriorated to be habitable
also needs to be repaired or replaced.

far from work on the periphery of town, or building their own houses or renting shacks in slums
or squatter settlements. (See Quick Guide 2 on
Low-income housing)
The shortfall of housing is primarily for low-income housing, where the popualtion is the least
able to pay for rising land and housing construction costs and where the market has not been
able to provide affordable housing in locations
where poor people can access employment and
others services.

A housing unit can be built by a household itself, or
by a carpenter or small contractor that a household
hires. Housing can be built by developers for profit
So, shelter is not affordable to the poor, and this
or by government agencies. And housing can either
is where housing finance becomes so imporbe sold or rented, under a variety of rates, arrangetant. Options to afford housing are needed that
ments and payment terms.
can meet the scale required in the context of
You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to study Asian cities very long to rapid urbanization. Especially needed are different
realize how serious their housing problems are, housing finance mechanisms that can reach the
and how many urban households simply cannot poor. The role of housing finance is also gaining
afford decent housing of any size or shape. In importance as governments are becoming less
most countries, large portions of the urban popu- concerned with direct provision of housing, and
lation cannot afford adequate housing, and are acting more in the role of enabler, including workhaving to make do squeezing their households ing with finance to provide more housing choices
into smaller and smaller housing units, or living for people in cities.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

1

Owner-built housing:
Housing as something people make themselves

The majority of houses in Asian cities are not built
by the government or the private sector but by the
people who live in them. Owner-built housing is
still the most popular form of housing production
in the region, among all income groups and across
all types and qualities of housing. There are good
reasons for this: when people build themselves
(or hire their own carpenters, masons or small
contractors to build for them), they can control the
whole process and build the house which precisely
suits their tastes, their needs, their aspirations and
their resources. Another advantage of owner-built
housing is that it allows households to find creative
ways of helping pay for their houses. If they have
enough land, households will often build more than
one housing unit and sell-off or rent the additional
units, as a way of offsetting their house construction costs or generating a long-term income.

the private sector, the urgent housing needs in
Asian cities are being addressed by the poor
themselves, through the housing they build in
informal settlements. More than half the population of many Asian cities is now living in informal
settlements. The enormous stock of affordable
housing which these slums and squatter settlements provide may be insecure, of poor quality
and badly-serviced, but by housing their workforces, it has enabled cities to grow and prosper.
There is an urgent need to upgrade these informal
settlements into better-serviced and secure
neighbourhoods.
There are many lessons to be learned from this
people-produced housing delivery system. These
include how to understand better the housing
needs of the urban poor, and how to help their
informal housing supply systems work more
efficiently and equitably. (See Quick Guide 2 on
Low-income Housing).

In the absence of any effective, large-scale
response to housing shortages by the state or

Housing is a process

PHOTO
5-A
PHOTO: CODI

For people from all income groups — but especially for the poor — housing is not a product, but
a process. It’s not something that is completed all
at one time according to a plan, but is developed
in stages, as a household’s needs and resources
change. Many complain that the sub-standard
housing you find in slums, which is often built
in this incremental way, is not acceptable. But
this kind of housing represents an extremely
delicate expression of poor people’s gradual
capacity to climb out of poverty. Like the houses
they build, it’s not something that happens all at
once. But in cases where housing finance and

secure tenure are made available to people,
the quality of owner-built housing — even at
the bottom-end of the economic ladder — can
improve dramatically.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

CONDITIONS

Who produces housing in Asian cities?

3

PHOTO
6-A
PHOTO: ACHR

In various countries and at various times,
governments have tried to act as the main
producers of housing, usually in the form of
subsidized apartments in low, medium and
high-rise blocks, and in large housing colonies
at the periphery of cities. It was thought that this
kind of mass-produced public housing could be
produced cheaper and faster by governments,
through economies of scale. But most government-built housing is not cheap at all, nor is
it mass-produced enough to be able to meet
more than a tiny fraction of actual needs. Many
governments have now adopted a more realistic
enabling approach towards housing, and are
attempting to increase the supply of housing
by shifting from a focus on constructing housing

to supporting the housing production of others,
such as the private sector, cooperative societies,
or individual households themselves, with help
from various regulatory and financial tools.

Government-built social housing:
Housing as a form of subsidized welfare
housing might be a practical solution. But the reality
is that a great majority of urban poor households
canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afford formal sector housing of any sort, and
their housing needs are far too big for governments
to be able to meet in this way.

For those who cannot afford to own or rent acceptable housing through the formal sector, social
housing that is rented at subsidized rates has long
been a housing policy option. Governments are
often a key producer of social housing, but are
not the only one to supply social housing: there
are also social housing projects developed by
cooperatives, charities, housing associations,
employers and universities.
Subsidizing the housing of a cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poor population
can help these households to survive. But social
housing also indirectly subsidizes private-sector
employers, since it allows them to continue paying
below-survival wages to their workers, while still
keeping their production costs low and profits high.
If only a small percentage of households in Asian
cities were in need of adequate housing, social

PHOTO: BASPANA - KAZAKHSTAN

CONDITIONS

2

Government-built housing:
Housing as something the state supplies

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

CONDITIONS

4

Private sector housing:
Housing as a commodity people buy or rent

In almost all Asian cities, private sector developers are becoming major housing producers in
three ways:
As suppliers of components of housing such
as land, finance, building materials and labour.
as contractors which build houses for individuals or government agencies.

PHOTO
7-A

as producers and sellers of houses as
commercial, speculative products.
PHOTO: ACHR

In many Asian cities, a lot of the housing being
produced by the private-sector is built “to order”
for individual clients, but speculative housing by
developers is a growing industry. Many developers
also sell not-yet-built housing units in a project to tion in stages. While this reduces the developer’s
people who sign up to make lump-sum payments at risk, it shows how hard it can be to obtain finance
intervals, as a strategy for financing the construc- for a housing project.

5

Private sector rental housing:
Housing as a flexible option

In most Asian cities, rental housing plays an important role in urban housing, particularly for those who
cannot afford a house, who may not be ready to
settle down in one place, or for whom a permanent
house may be a lower priority to saving or sending
money home to the village.

PHOTO
7-B

PHOTO: ACHR

In most Asian cities, there are viable, vibrant rental
housing markets for all income groups. At the bottom end, there is an enormous informal market of
rental rooms and land plots in slums and on private
land. These small rooms or subdivided units may
offer crowded, sub-standard living conditions,
but they are cheap and available and represent
an important survival option for many poor and
migrant households. (See Quick Guide 7 on Rental
Housing).

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

4 ways to reduce housing costs

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

The cost of housing represents a huge expense for most households, compared to what they earn.
Reducing the cost of producing housing, therefore, is one way of reducing the financial burden on
people’s shoulders. The main components of housing are land, the housing itself and infrastructure
services. There are many ways of providing these different components, or reducing their costs
— altogether or separately. (See Quick Guide 3 on Land).

1

Mass producing housing
units on a large scale

There are many variables in any housing construction process, and the amount of cost-saving
in a mass-produced housing process will depend
on the current costs of land, labour, materials
and equipment. Most mass-produced housing
falls into two categories:
High or mid-rise blocks of apartments,
where land costs are brought down by building more units on a small piece of land,
and by standardizing the housing units and
reducing construction costs through economies of scale. But while building a 12-story
block of apartments might be the obvious
way of bringing down per-unit land and
construction costs, a high-rise building may
also have higher social and economic costs,
which make them work less well for the
poor. High rise apartment buildings may be
suitable housing for middle class and upper
income households, who use their houses
for living purposes only, but problematic for
the poor, who use their housing for both
economic activities and shelter.
Detached or semi-detached houses,
where costs are reduced mainly by building
the same standard unit many times and
making use of economies of scale.

2

Self-building
by people

Supporting people to build their own housing is
one of the best ways of reducing costs, making
housing affordable to low-income households
and creating a vibrant housing stock in our cities.
Self-building allows households to build flexibly
and incrementally, as and when they have a
need or have the funds. Self-building remains
the chief means for poor households to bring
down the costs of their housing.

Don’t take the term self
built too literally, though
Many urban poor households are too busy earning their living to build their own houses, or they
don’t have the skills to build a good house. So
thriving markets of small informal contractors,
masons, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and
materials suppliers tend to blossom in every city
to serve this low-end of the housing sector.
Even if they aren’t doing the work themselves,
the house-owners manage the process and are in
control of all aspects of their housing production,
and often contribute their labour. And ultimately,
the costs of self-built houses will match the
house-owner’s available resources.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

3

Introducing more practical, more realistic and more
flexible building standards

What happens in most cases is that people
don’t follow the rules — whether they are rich
or poor. in cities like Bangkok, Mumbai, Manila
or Jakarta, you will be hard-pressed to find a
single building which follows all the rules — from
the richest person’s mansion right down to the
shacks in a slum.
One way to reduce housing costs is to introduce
more appropriate and more flexible building
standards, which better match the needs and
realities of poor. And one of the best ways to do
this is to make room for poor communities to be
involved in framing their own local building standards through practice — and then negotiating
with their governments to get these standards
recognized.

PHOTO
9-A
PHOTO: UNESCAP

Many of the urban housing standards in Asia are
based on those in developed countries. Most of
these standards have been written for housing
that is produced by private-sector developers
and is aimed at middle-income households. It is
reasonable to expect that where private-sector
developers build large-scale, high-rise housing for
well-off households, housing and building standards need to be high. But when poor households
build their own houses over time, these affluent
building standards don’t make a lot of sense.

Another way to reduce building costs is to introduce
and help popularize the production and use of standardized building components such as pre-cast
beams, columns, piles, roof tiles, ceiling panels,
door frames and septic tanks in the construction
industry, so that a household can purchase them
off the shelf and assemble them on the site. These
components are mass-produced, and enjoy similar
economies of scale as mass-produced housing.
This kind of mass-production of simple building
components can also be set up on a smaller
scale, within poor communities themselves, by
local entrepreneurs, with a little bit of training and
technical assistance.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Another way is to replace the conventional
system of strict building inspection and control
mechanisms with a system of facilitation and
support. It is important to remember that the
purpose of building standards is not to punish
households but to improve their housing and
make it more safe and effective.

Many argue that one of the reasons why housing
in our cities is unaffordable to so many is because
housing and building standards are too high:
roads are too wide, plots are too big, setbacks
eat up too much space, engineering standards
are too conservative and service levels are too
high. If all these well-intended regulations were
actually followed, housing of a very high standard
might result, but it would be too expensive for
most people in the city to afford.

3 concepts to understand about
affordability
The ability to pay
for housing

Even after using all kinds of cost-reducing measures, housing will still be expensive. And that
means people who want to build or buy a house will have to borrow money. How much money a
household can borrow (and therefore what kind of housing they can purchase or build) depends on
their ability to repay a loan. Affordability is a key to getting housing to low-income groups in cities.
Making housing more affordable often means improving people’s access to additional resources
(like loans), so they can afford housing they couldn’t otherwise pay for. Housing professionals
have three ways to determine how much a household is able to pay:
By using a percentage of their monthly income. This is based on average payments made
by other households in similar circumstances. This method of determining ability to pay is the
easiest and most frequently used. The rule-of- thumb for low-income households is to use a figure
between 20% and 40% of monthly household income — usually 30%. However, spending 40%
of the monthly income on housing is very high for poor households who may also have to spend
half their income on food as well as other costs such as transport and school fees.
By subtracting expenditure (including current rental or housing expenses) from
monthly income, to determine ability to pay. This method may be more accurate, since
it takes into account a household’s income and expenditure, and therefore better reflects their
economic realities. But in practice, such individual measurements of ability to pay are seldom
made. Instead, averages across the group are used to determine how much households can
pay, and these averages tend to be higher than many can actually afford to pay.
By letting the household
decide. This method is the best,
because it allows both the ability
and willingness to pay to be taken
into account, and that depends on
the decision of each household.
Finding out what households will
actually pay, rather than what
they are able to pay is a less abstract and more powerful way of
understanding factors (like house
design, location or timing) that a
poor household considers when
it decides to borrow for housing.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

PHOTO: PACSI

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

1

A household’s monthly
income

In many poor households, there is more than one
income-earner and more than one source of income. And many of these incomes may come from
informal sector jobs and small businesses. Plus,
it is in the nature of informal sector employment
(and of poverty in general) that incomes fluctuate
and crises come up which can make a household’s
available resources highly unstable. All these
things make it difficult for formal finance institutions
to determine a household’s total income.

Poor people know best
what they can afford
To simplify things, most financial institutions
bypass the complicated realities of poverty and
instead use rules-of-thumb (such as a percentage
of average monthly income) to determine how
much a household can afford to repay a loan. But
the most successful housing finance programmes,
with the best repayment rates, are usually those
in which poor households — and well-organized
poor communities — are the ones who determine
how much they can afford to borrow and how much
they can afford to repay, not banks or external
lending institutions.

PHOTO
11 - A

3

Housing need vs.
housing demand

Need is the term economists use to describe the
condition of lacking something — like affordable
housing. Demand is the term which describes the
number of those things that would be bought, if
they were available on the market. So need is
useful for planning purposes, but demand is what
housing producers are interested in knowing.
Differences between need and demand can create
some strange situations in cities. During times of
acute housing shortages, when housing needs are
very high, there may be a lot of empty housing all
over the place, but because their cost is too high,
there may not be much demand for them. So when
you’re planning for housing in a city, it’s important to
look carefully at the figures which describe housing
needs, and then try to estimate the likely demands
for the different kinds and prices of housing to be
produced, so needs can be met.
It’s not always easy to figure out demand, since
it depends on the price and availability of various
kinds of housing. Demand is not something absolute or static, and can sometimes get blown-up.
When there isn’t a lot of housing available, for
example, people may decide to stay with their
extended families, but if housing becomes easily
available, they may decide to move out. But when
it comes to housing for the poor, demand is best
determined by the poor themselves.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Household income is a crucial factor in determining affordability. In a situation where most
household bread-winners are employed in regular jobs in the formal sector, determining current
and even future incomes is easier. But in most
Asian countries, the informal, irregular incomes
of urban poor households can be quite difficult
to assess. For housing finance purposes, more
important than a household’s total income is the
amount left over after monthly expenditures,
since that is what will be used to make repayments and will therefore determine how much a
household can borrow.

PHOTO: ACHR

2

Why is housing finance so
important?

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Housing is a fundamental human need and right

1

Housing provides shelter for people to live in and space to carry on the various activities
of their lives. Housing also provides a fixed point which allows people to get access to
basic services like water supply, electricity, sanitation, house registration and citizen
identification. Adequate housing is a human right and the access to housing, and terms
under which they occupy that housing, are important parts of a household’s social
status and important aspects of their well-being.

Housing is expensive

2

In some countries, a decent house can cost up to ten times a household’s yearly
income. Even under the most favourable conditions, housing will cost a minimum
of three times a household’s yearly income. Because the cost of housing is so high,
compared to what people earn, only the richest households will usually have the cash
in hand to buy their houses outright, without any loans or financing.

It makes sense to borrow to buy the housing we live in

3

It is possible for households to save money to purchase housing at some time in the
future, or to gradually set aside materials to build one later on. But the high cost of
housing means they will have to save for a long time. Depending on their income, most
households can afford to spend only about a third of their income on housing, although
many now are spending up to 50 percent. If a household did save a third of its income to
buy a housing unit in the future, on average, it would take 15 to 20 years to save enough
to buy that housing unit. They would also need a place to stay during that long period.
That would probably mean paying rent — on top of the money they were already putting
into their housing saving. For most households, 15 to 20 years is just too long to wait.
The obvious alternative is to reverse the process: borrow the money to buy housing at
the beginning, when housing is most needed, and then take the 15 to 20 years to pay
back the loan. That way, a household can live in the unit they are paying for.

But to do that means finding a willing lender

4
10

Before the days of banking and credit institutions, such loans would come from better-off
family members or patrons. Family loans, of course, don’t require much paperwork, and
lenders tend to take a lenient view of late payments or defaults. But many have no access
to such options since poor people often have poor relatives. Such informal family loan
systems cannot finance the housing needs of large numbers of households.
QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

What about the poor?

PHOTO: ICSI - PHILIPPINES

PHOTO
13 - A

First came banking, and then the
more specialized field of housing
finance . . .
What is needed are institutions that collect the savings of people who do not need to spend all the
money they earn, and make it available as loans to people who want to make a major expenditure
like purchasing a house. That is why banks came into being. However, banks lend money for all
sorts of purposes, often for shorter periods and with higher profits than housing. Over the years, a
new breed of specialised finance institutions have developed, whose main business is to lend money
for housing — so far, mostly to non-poor households.

PHOTO
13 - B
PHOTO: ACHR

Housing finance is the term for the
whole process by which households
get loans to buy a house, including
all the rules and procedures that
go with that process. Housing
finance covers the process of giving and recovering loans, not only
to individual households, but also
to housing developers, based on
funds raised by the lender from the
wider financial markets.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

11

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Where formal systems for
providing finance for land
and housing have developed,
access has been limited
mainly to those with formal
employment, with regular
salaries, bank accounts and
co-signing friends — all the
things that are necessary to
apply for formal sector housing
loans, and all the things that
most urban poor can’t provide.

Banks and formal lending
institutions are businesses. They
loan in order to turn a profit on
the money they lend — for all
purposes. In order to ensure
their profits, cover their costs and
attract others to invest the money
they need to lend for housing, it is
essential that loans get paid back.

PHOTO: ACHR

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

It has to make a profit:

Understanding how formal housing
finance systems work
Most households will need to borrow money in
order to get decent housing. There are banks and
lending institutions that specialize in providing
loans for housing. But housing finance requires
a bit of specialized understanding, because:
All housing units are different.
Housing loans are big, because of the
high cost of housing and as compared to
the monthly incomes of the borrowers.
The repayment period is long for housing loans — usually much longer than other
kinds of consumer and business loans.
Banks and housing finance institutions need to
take all these factors into account when they give
out loans. And they have to be careful because the
bottom line is that they have to get their money
back, as the loans are eventually repaid.
Loans have to be recovered, because the money
loaned by a bank is not the bank’s property, but
consists of other people’s savings — savings they
may not need right now, but will want at some
point in the future. A bank acts as a kind of broker
to link savings with credit needs. A bank can only
12

give out loans if people are prepared to deposit
their savings in that bank.

Housing finance
in poor countries
In poorer countries, formal housing finance is
often underdeveloped, because:
There are many poor people who do not
save in banks or cannot afford to save, and
so there isn’t a lot of money available from
formal sources to lend.
Many people don’t trust banks and keep their
money safe by stowing it under, for example,
mattresses or buying gold instead.
Banks prefer to lend the money they have
to a business for a short period, rather than
for housing over many years.
The economic and political situation is often
unstable and that increases the risk that a
borrower may not be able to pay back a
loan.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

Where does the money for housing
loans come from?
much that they no longer match the value of
the loan collateral or that inflation makes the
loan worthless. Long term loans also tie up
relatively large amounts of lending capital for
long periods of time.
Attracting funds from various sources to finance
housing is no easy matter. To attract funds, it is
important to know the motivations and objectives
of the people that save and the institutions that
invest and to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to satisfy those objectives in a
secure manner.

Lending money over a long period of time is
a lot riskier for a lender because the chances
are greater that a borrower might default on
the loan, that property values may drop so

Buying and selling housing loans
they sell these loans to long-term investors depends on the overall risk of the loan going into
default. In more mature financial markets, such
transactions are closely regulated to ensure
transparent allocation of risks for both the investors and for the housing finance institutions.
Secondary mortgage markets are still new to
Asia, though, and exist only in more mature
financial markets such as in Japan, Korea,
Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

One way for formal housing finance institutions
to attract lending capital is through the development of secondary mortgage markets. In
secondary markets housing finance institutions
can sell their housing loans often at some sort
of discount to long-term investors such as pension funds or insurance companies.

1

The incentive for the housing
finance institutions is that they can
use the money they get by selling off these
packages of housing loans to finance a new
set of housing loans. Plus, by allowing them to
share the risk of lending with other investors,
the housing finance institution is able to reduce
the cost of lending, which means lower interest
rates for the borrowers.
The incentive for the long-term investors who buy up these loans is that
they can get a regular, predictable income from
the loan repayments. The amount of discount
offered by the housing finance institutions when

PHOTO
15 - A
PHOTO: LUMANTI

2

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

13

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Having the funds in place to make housing
loans to large numbers of households requires
the presence of an effective and accessible
housing finance market, which is responsive to
the needs of the majority. And this requires a
better understanding of how to attract funds to
the housing finance sector and how to manage
those funds effectively and efficiently.

Besides borrowing from capital markets (especially through secondary mortgage markets), there
are a number of other strategies which formal sector finance institutions use to attract funds for
housing. It is important to remember, though, that most of these strategies still fail to meet the
needs of those poor who do not have regular incomes. What are some of these strategies?

1

Housing finance from banksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; guarantee funds
One of the advantages of housing finance for investors is that it is less risky to invest in
housing finance than something more volatile, like currency markets or start-up companies.
In many countries, governments make good use of this lower-risk to persuade commercial
banks to use part of the reserves they are required to maintain for housing loans.

2

Housing finance from compulsory savings schemes
Funds can also be channelled towards housing through the creation of compulsory or contractual savings, where a percentage is deducted from the salary checks of workers and put into
a special bank account dedicated especially for housing. The pool of money in these special
housing savings accounts is then available for housing loans to the member workers.

3

Housing finance from specific taxes or government lotteries
Another strategy is for governments to declare a certain tax (for example a luxury tax on
imports) or run a national lottery in order to generate funds for housing finance.
Doing things by the book:

PHOTO: CODI

PHOTO
16 - A

14

Whatever the technique being used
to attract funds for housing finance,
it is important to have in place
proper controls and regulations, and
institutions that are well and effectively
managed. These institutions need
not necessarily be governmental, but
transparency and efficiency are a must
to assure potential lenders that loans
will be repaid.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

PHOTO: CODI

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

PHOTO
17 - A

Housing finance funds which
are driven by community
organizations of the poor, or
at least managed jointly with
them, are now proliferating
and maturing in many Asian
countries, and presenting a
significant new finance delivery mechanism that really
does reach the poor.

Managing
housing finance funds
Managing funds for housing finance effectively
is the best way of ensuring that more funds
will be made available for more loans in the
pipeline. Effective management is also the best
way of ensuring those funds continue to be
repaid, so that they can revolve in new loans,
and increase the impact a certain amount of
limited lending capital can make on the housing supply in cities. Besides transparency and
openness, management costs should be kept
to a minimum and clearly accounted for.
Housing finance funds can be managed by
a number of different actors, or combination
of actors. We now have many examples of
strong housing finance institutions being run
not only by banks, but by national federations
of poor communities, cooperatives, municipal
and national governments, NGOs, non-profit
institutions — and increasingly by collaborative institutions which bring together several
of these stakeholders.

Many options
These finance institutions can be set up
as private or non-profit organisations,
NGOs or cooperative organizations
working for their saving and borrowing
members. They can also be set up as
specialist housing finance institutions or
be located as a special “window” within an
already-established finance institution.
Each of these institutional set-ups have
their advantages and disadvantages, but
the most effective tend to be those which
are tailor-made to suit the particular circumstances and political and regulatory
environment of their local context. The
important consideration is whether the
set-up can effectively and efficiently manage the financial tasks required of it.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

15

The conditions that come with a housing loan
are important elements which determine who
can and can’t get that loan. A loan’s conditions
include all those restrictions which determine
who is eligible to take that loan and who isn’t
— things like a person’s monthly income, history
of past savings, available assets and household
members willing to guarantee the loan.
The terms and conditions of a loan are usually
set in ways that reduce the lender’s risk, protect

its own business interests and guard against
not being repaid. And of course, reducing the
lender’s risk means limiting the pool of eligible
borrowers.
Finally, the least risky loans for the lenders are
those with the stiffest conditions for the borrowers, which exclude many and include only
those with the best credentials and the ones with
better-paid and more secure long-term jobs in
the formal sector.

Why can’t most poor people borrow money from banks?
A regular income: Perhaps the greatest obstacle for poor borrowers is the
condition that they prove that they have a
regular monthly income, which most poor
households working in informal sector, selfemployed or casual labour jobs do not.
Collateral: Another obstacle is the need
to have legal title to the property they want
to buy, which most of the urban poor don’t
have.

1

Understanding loan repayment periods

A loan’s repayment term refers to the period
of time during which the loan has to be repaid.
This period is usually fixed at the beginning, as
part of the loan contract. While loans for business purposes tend to be short term, housing
loans are necessarily long-term. To make the
monthly repayments affordable to households
of all income groups, the repayment term has
to be stretched over a long period — usually 15
to 30 years. In theory, these long repayment
terms should get easier for a household to
repay a loan over time, since their monthly
repayments remain the same, while most
are expected to enjoy a gradual increase in
16

High downpayments: To reduce the lender’s
risk, many housing loans come with the condition that a certain part of the total housing cost
is borne by the borrower. Poor households
often do not have the means to raise such
“downpayments”.
Small loans: Given their low income, the poor
often require small, incremental loans which
can be easily paid back. Processing such small
loans is not cost effective for banks.

PHOTO
18 - A
PHOTO: LUMANTI

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Understanding loan conditions

their incomes. But with the cost of housing in cities
rising fast, and with fluctuating interest rates that
are seldom low, these 15-30 year housing loans
can become very expensive and a great burden on
households of all income groups.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

2

Understanding interest rates

Interest is a kind of rent people pay to use someone else’s savings money. Interest also has to
cover a bank’s administrative costs, profits and
risks they absorb when somebody doesn’t repay
their loan. The interest charged on a loan is
an important part of whether it is affordable to
potential borrowers. For poor borrowers, high
interest rates can make the loan too expensive
and therefore inaccessible. Higher interest rates
encourage people to save but discourage people
from borrowing. But sometimes higher interest
rates are a necessary trade-off, because without
them, the banks won’t be profitable and won’t be
able to attract money for giving more loans.
Governments sometimes try to force housing
finance institutions to keep interest rates low, so

3

that loans will be affordable for low-income borrowers. But when this happens on a large scale, it can
actually backfire and encourage investors to take
their money out of the bank and look elsewhere
for more profitable places to invest.
How are interest rates calculated? The interest rates charged on loans vary a lot, depending
on local market rates, degrees of risk for the borrower, length of the loan repayment term and the
regulatory conditions in each country. The basic
interest rates in a country’s economy are usually
set by the government or are set to follow the
prevailing finance market rates. But this is just a
kind of reference point.
Interest rates often change during the
course of a loan’s repayment. There was a
time when interest rates remained fairly stable
over a long period of time, but increasingly,
interest rates change dramatically during the
15 to 20-year period over which a typical housing loan is repaid. As a result, many formal
housing loans these days are made with the
understanding that the interest the borrower will
have to pay will change (or “float”) over time,
according to the fluctuations in the prevailing
market interest rates.

Understanding collateral

Besides charging interest rates that are high
enough to ensure a good profit, lenders try to
protect their investment by taking steps to reduce
the risk of not being repaid. A common technique
lenders use to safeguard against non-repayment
is to require that borrowers deposit something of
value with the lender, which is kept for security
against non-repayment, and returned only when
the loan is fully repaid. This is called collateral or

loan security, and can take the form of gold jewellery, a land title deed or other valuable items. The
use of property as loan security has now become
common in housing finance around the world and
is called a “mortgage”. The requirement of property
as collateral has made housing loans inaccessible
to the majority of urban poor households, who live
on properties with uncertain tenure. (See Quick
Guide 3 on Land).

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

17

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

It’s important to remember that for banks
and lending institutions, loans are business.
They are not lending money to people out of
the goodness of their hearts — they expect
to earn a profit on the money they loan out.
In the business of loans, that profit comes in
the form of yearly interest a borrower has to
pay on top of the repayment of the original
loan amount.

CONCEPTS&APPROACHES

Conventional housing finance
strategies
Housing finance is one part of the much larger
financial sector where money is loaned and repaid
to fuel the development of cities and national
economies. These financial markets include all
the buyers and sellers and borrowers, as well as
all the transactions that take place between them.
Similarly, the housing finance market includes the
producers of housing, the consumers of housing,
the institutions that loan money for housing and all
the transactions which take place between them.
Conventional housing finance strategies are based
on a separation between housing production and
housing finance. The housing is produced, as
large or small public or private-sector projects.
In conventional housing finance, the objective is
to provide loans to people to enable them to buy
these ready-made housing units, as and when it
suits them, most often using mortgage-financed
loans.
For this kind of finance system to work, there
must be several lending institutions capable of

handling mortgage finance, and these institutions
must have enough capital to lend for housing.
When such lending institutions are being started
by government, some public funds will usually
have to be provided as start-up lending capital.
It is also important that procedures for raising additional funds for lending are spelled out clearly,
and that all the rules about who can borrow and
under what terms are clear and transparent. Most
conventional lending institutions will be governed
by some kind of board, and managed by a separate
management structure with a full staff trained to
operate all aspects of the institutions.
These financial institutions must also be embedded in a regulatory environment which provides a
legal basis for making loans, borrowing, repaying
and repossessing housing assets or accessing
insurance in the event of loan defaults. The lending
process is also dependent on a land management
system which clearly identifies land ownership and
land title of individual plots.

Risk and lending to the poor
Because banks work with other’s people’s money, they try to keep risks at a minimum. As we’ve seen, one
way of reducing risk is to require that borrowers put up some kind of guarantee or collateral. In the case of a
housing loan, the guarantee is usually property: land or housing. Then, if the borrower can’t repay the loan,
the bank can take possession of the property and sell it to recover the un-repaid money. But the collateral
requirement creates an unfair situation where those who have property can easily borrow to buy more property,
while those without property cannot borrow or buy anything.

Housing loans tie up capital for a long time: Although the risks associated with housing loans

may be low, many believe there is a shortage of funds for housing loans to low-income households
because they tie up small amounts of capital for long periods of time, earn a low interest rate and
are therefore less attractive to lenders than other kinds of shorter-term, higher-yielding lending.

Loans to the poor are small, risky and a headache to manage: Housing finance institutions

are reluctant to finance low-income housing because it is more risky, with greater numbers of defaults,
greater potential troubles, greater administrative expenses and headaches recovering repayments
on so many tiny individual loans.

18

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

PHOTO: URC - KARACHI

Why aren’t formal
housing finance
systems reaching
the poor?
When it comes to getting housing finance to
reach the poor, the conventional systems for
managing housing finance and the formal
finance institutions that lend for housing have
an extremely low record. The sad fact is that
the formal housing systems, as they exist
today in most Asian countries, have been
unable to reach the majority of the urban
populations.
Even where these conventional finance
systems have been supplemented with a
variety of direct and indirect subsidies on
housing costs, interest rates and repayments,
these extra measures have not been enough
to overcome the problems that are inherent
in conventional finance mechanisms. As a
result, they continue to serve only a select
and fortunate few, leaving the majority of
potential borrowers outside the scope of their
financial services.

Clash between formal
finance systems and
informal lives
It is important to understand that the way
formal banks and lending institutions operate is miles away from the realities of how
poor people live, work, survive and manage their money in informal communities.
Because incomes are low and irregular,
in rare cases where poor households can
access formal loans, they can only afford
to borrow very small amounts, or a series
of small loans over time.
For banks, the administrative costs of
lending a small amount of a hundred
dollars to a poor household is almost the
same as lending a million dollars to a rich
businessperson. And of course their profits
will be almost nothing on the hundreddollar loan, but very large on the million
dollar loan. So it’s no surprise that most
banks would prefer to focus their lending
on the million-dollar clients rather than the
hundred-dollar ones.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

19

CONCEPTS&APPROACHES

Most formal lending institutions expect that poor
people should adjust themselves to accommodate
their formal systems. But after decades of
expecting, this is not happening. The poor can’t
follow these regulations and can’t squeeze their
uncertain lives into these strict criteria. Yet, these
institutions don’t seem able to look at the equation
the other way around: that it should be their job to
adjust their system to address the realities of the
people they are seeking to help.

In the absence of accessible formal
housing loans, the poor are more or less
on their own, or left to supplement their
resources with loans from the informal
sector, where accessibility might be
greater, but there is a big price to be
paid in high interest rates.
PHOTO: UNESCAP

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

Not many options for the poor:

How to make housing finance
reach the poor better
As already discussed, formal housing finance
systems touch only a fraction of the total houses
produced in most Asian countries. These formal
financial markets have been unable to reach
down the income levels in our societies and
reach those households in most urgent need of
loans for land and housing.
Many argue that to reach this neglected sector
that is in such great need of access to loans,
there is a need for new kinds of specialist institutions, with more flexible policies and a new
working culture that understands poor peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
financial realities. Unless the institutions which
make loans to poor communities can understand the particular needs of this client group,
they will almost certainly face non-repayment
problems.
It is important to remember that the high cost of
housing and the low wages of the urban poor
continue to limit access to housing loans to only
those with higher and more regular incomes. In
cases where land or housing loans are provided
through the formal-sector processes, access is
20

limited to those with formal-sector employment
who can provide all the documents to support
their application for these entitlements. But most
of the poor live and work in the informal sector
of the economy.

The poor
are credit worthy
The poor can borrow and they can repay
their loans. But the systems which manage
their borrowing and repaying must involve
them centrally in the management. They
must also be flexible enough and open
enough to allow new strategies for loan
repayment which allow poor communities
to resolve repayment problems â&#x20AC;&#x201D; strategies like making bulk loans to community
groups instead of individual loans, and
letting the group manage the repayment
process collectively.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

Understanding how informal
finance markets work
competition is so limited and the risks of nonrepayment are so high. Since most loans
are given without any collateral, defaults and
non-repayments are usually punished loudly
and violently, to ensure that other clients will
be scared enough to repay their loans. With
these kinds of interest rates, small loans can
mushroom into giant financial burdens in a very
short time, putting households into a position of
perpetual enslavement to their lenders.

Interests rates charged on informal loans from
loan-sharks and money lenders are often exorbitant â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sometimes as high as 1% per day,
or 20% per month â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and repayment collection
practices when people default can be brutal.
Economists would point out that these loans
from money-lenders are expensive because

This is a system nobody likes and nobody
wants, but because it is the only one available
to most poor households, it accounts for up to
80% of all housing finance among Asiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban
poor. It may be violent and exploitative, but the
informal loan markets comprise a significant financial sector which needs to be understood.

The option to accept this system and improve it
Some feel that with a little understanding and
regulation, these informal lending systems
could operate much more effectively, more
efficiently and less exploitatively. Many also
feel that formal-sector lenders have a lot
to learn from the informal lending systems,
which have been able to make finance more
accessible to the majority of the population,
especially the poor.
Most informal markets operate best because
lenders know their borrowers and have social
links which make it difficult for borrowers to
default on loans without losing face. This is not
too different from the principles of client relationships, credit history and credit-rating that banks
use to determine who gets a loan. The lesson in

these informal lending systems is that financial
relationships can be based on mutual trust and
cooperation, rather than strict documentation of
income or willingness to pay.
For all their problems, these informal loan
systems show that small, localized operations
may be more effective than big centralized ones,
allowing for personal knowledge to replace legal
requirements and paperwork. But because they
are so localized, informal lenders may not have
the capacity to serve the scale of need that exists
within their area. Plus, when things go wrong
with an informal loan, because everything is
based on spoken agreements, neither borrower
nor lender have much scope to get external help
through the legal system.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

21

CONCEPTS & APPROACHES

There is a burgeoning informal financial
market that provides quick and easy access
to housing finance for those unable to meet
the terms and conditions of formal sector
loans. The principles of the informal financial sector are similar to those of the formal
sector, but their informality has advantages
and disadvantages. Although this informal
market meets a large need, it does so at
great cost.

PHOTO: ACHR

5 strategies
to make sure
housing
finance reaches
the poor

Strategy 1:

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

Community-based self-finance

Being largely left out of the formal financial
markets and as a response to the exploitation
of the informal market, with the help of NGOs
and some government organizations, many
poor communities are increasingly building
and managing their own collective finance
mechanisms through community savings and
credit activities.
When communities save their money together,
and make loans from their collective savings,
they are not only building their own financial
resource base, but they are developing the
collective management skills and financial
capacities to manage money as a group.
Community members enjoy most of the advantages that informal lenders do, such as
closely knowing the situation of the borrower
and using social collateral as a mechanism
to recover loans. Because they are owned
and operated by the poor themselves they
are able to eliminate the costs of the formal
market and the exploitative elements of the
informal market.
22

Poor communities in cities across Asia â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and
large, well-organized networks and federations
of these communities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have in the past twenty
years been building what is now a large, well-organized and well-connected movement of community-managed savings and credit groups.
Besides saving for livelihood, emergencies and
housing, these savings groups have also strengthened the communities they operate in, by providing
people a simple, regular mechanism for building
collective management skills, cooperation and
mutual assistance, while they build a communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
own financial resource base.
Where poor households have no hope of negotiating for what they need as individuals, or even as
a poor community, they are increasingly learning
that as large, well-organized networks of poor communities, who come to the bargaining table with
their own significant resources, they can negotiate
for many things they need, such as land, basic
services and access to housing finance. Without
the strength of this large scale support, these
things would be unreachable.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

Strategy 2:
Simplifying the formal sector
While the formal housing finance system has the funds and the ability to raise funds from formal
financial markets, the informal and community-based housing finance systems have the knowledge
and experience to successfully reach the poor. It is important for the formal housing finance system
to understand and tap this knowledge. One way is for formal sector lenders to adopt more simplified,
informal-style practices in their lending programmes to the poor â&#x20AC;&#x201D; practices such as:
Minimal paperwork. The poor are often intimidated by bureaucracy and canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afford to take
much time from their work. Many poor people may also be illiterate.
Minimal collateral requirements. This requires the lender to know the borrower and
have close links with both the borrower and also his or her community, so that social pressure
techniques can be used in cases of default. This might suggest locating the loan office right
inside the informal settlement, or somewhere close by.
Ensuring flexibility in repayment. Poor households have different abilities to repay. Standardized practices often fail to reach them. Negotiating terms of repayment that are mutually
agreeable, on a case-by-case basis, can greatly reduce the instances of default.
Incremental housing financing. Giving a series of small, consecutive housing loans is one
way to help poor households build up their credit history and rating: so that after repaying a few
smaller loans, they would be eligible for taking a larger loan with a longer repayment term.

To subsidize or not to subsidize?
Many working in the field of low-income housing
believe that the best way to make housing loans
affordable to the poor is to subsidize them, so
that the poor pay below-market interest rates
on the money they borrow. The subsidy can be
provided by the lending institution (in the form
of reduced profits earned on those loans) or by
the government (in the form of direct subsidies
to the lenders, to make up the difference in
rates). Advocates argue that the poor, with
their irregular incomes and low wages, cannot
compete in the formal market systems and need

some subsidy. Subsidy opponents argue that the
poor pay much higher interest in the informal
sector anyway and so can afford to pay market
rates. Many poor households would be happy to
pay market interest rates, they say, if such loans
were available to them, rather than pay the high
rates charged by informal money lenders. They
also argue that given the huge scale of low-income housing needs, government subsidized
funds will never be sufficient. Funds would have
to be raised in the open market, where it is more
difficult to acquire subsidies.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

23

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

Many government and non-government finance institutions have adopted elements of this approach,
the most famous being the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The downside of this strategy is that
the transaction costs of loans for the bank or financing institution are high and therefore interest
rates may be higher than commercial banks. To make the loans cheaper, some governments have
tried to subsidize these loans. Other groups in India and the Philippines have tried to establish
guarantee funds which reduce the perceived risks associated with lending to the poor.

Strategy 3:
Channelling loans through
community savings groups

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

Another key approach is to use communitybased savings and loan schemes as “brokers”
for channelling loans to poor communities.
Community-based savings and loans schemes
provide governments and lending institutions with
an established, capable management mechanism
within poor communities themselves that is able
to manage loan disbursal and repayments as a
group, thereby reducing the lending institution’s
management overheads. A community savings
group not only attracts funds for housing finance,
but the process of operating a savings and loan
process within a poor community develops the
collective and individual financial management

capacities the poor will need to manage larger
housing and land loans later on. Many communities make housing loans from those institutions
dependent on having good prior savings, and use
peer-pressure systems to ensure repayment and
assist default situations collectively.
Women are especially atttracted to savings groups
because they provide credit quickly if the household is in crisis, and can provide loan facilities, for
example for income-generating activities. Women
also often find that their participation transforms
their relationship with others, in the family and in
the community. Saving groups create a venue for
meeting regularly, and for learning from others.

Collective finance
Collective land
Collective management
Communities with a history of collective savings and lending are in a good position to
manage housing finance which comes from
external sources, especially if that finance
is collective, not individual. A fast-growing
strategy for channelling housing finance to
these communities is to make group loans to
the community organization, which then onlends to its members, and takes responsibility
for managing every aspect of the repayment
process and making a single group repayment each month to the lender.
In these group loan strategies, the whole community is collectively responsible for repaying
the loan, and developing internal systems for
ensuring the repayments are made in full each
month, even if some members might have
24

repayment problems. Although savings groups
may have no legal power to punish late-payers,
there are a number of techniques they can
work into their loan management systems to
accommodate the inevitable repayment problems and to help their neighbours who have
problems making repayments. These systems
are positive, supportive, realistic and highly
social. When communities design and manage
them, they will ensure good repayment. One
way communities do this is by charging their
members an extra margin on top of the lender’s
interest rate, or making some extra monthly saving compulsory during the repayment period.
Both techniques allow a community to build up
a reserve to act as a buffer against repayment
problems.

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

Housing loans from CODI:
Between 1992 and December 2006,
CODI has approved a total of US$ 56
million in land and housing loans to
55,504 poor households, in 820 poor
and informal communities in 160 cities
around Thailand. All of these loans have
been channelled through the community
savings groups, which manage the repayment collectively. (More on CODI in Quick
Guide 6 on Community Organization)

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

Communities are increasingly negotiating
secure tenure terms that are not individual
but collective, through cooperative ownership
or collective leases to the land their settlements occupy. In Thailand, housing and land
loans from the Community Organizations
Development Institute (CODI) are made
only in bulk to community cooperatives with
active savings groups, and only when the land
is collectively owned or leased, at least for the
duration of the loan contract. Besides providing a
safeguard against speculation and gentrification,
this condition of collective tenure increases the
social pressure that the community organization
can exert on members who default. It also allows
the community to set up systems to collectively
provide for their own most vulnerable neighbours, such as the elderly. The added benefit of
this approach is that it sparks off other collective
activities, like community welfare, environmental
improvements, community enterprise, youth
groups and cultural activities.

PHOTO: CODI

Collective loans and collective land in Thailand

Another example of group lending is the Community Mortgage Programme (CMP),
which channels subsidized loans (from government fiscal budgets) for land and housing
to poor communities which have organized
themselves into homeowners associations and
found affordable land to buy and develop their
own housing, on a self-help basis. NGOs, local
governments or community federations act as
legal â&#x20AC;&#x153;originatorsâ&#x20AC;? for these community loans.
There is no requirement that communities have
savings groups, though, and its track record of
repayment is mixed.
Source: www.achr.net

PHOTO: ACHR

Collective loans and collective land in Philippines

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

25

PHOTO: USAID FIRE PROJECT

The gap between poor people’s survival
systems and formal development financing
is very wide. On the one side are the poor,
starved for resources. On the other side are
the development and finance sectors full of
resources but unable to get them to the people
who most need them.

One way to link poor households (in organized communities) with formal sector finance is by creating an intermediary institution of some sort, which can bridge the gap between them in several
ways. This intermediary institution could:

1

Increase the comfort factor. It could help formal institutions feel more comfortable about
lending to poor households by offering some kind of risk mitigation, loan guarantees, bridge
financing or even the non-economical reassurance of a trusted intermediary.

2

Open new markets. It could help formal finance institutions reach the markets which
have so far been unreachable to them.

3

Tailor loans. It could help the formal finance institutions to adjust their systems and
procedures to make the loans more workable for the poor, so that eventually they could
link with poor households directly, without any intermediary.

4

Promote bulk lending. It could take bulk wholesale loans from the finance institutions
and then lend-on in flexible ways to many different community housing, land and upgrading
projects — all with their own loan amounts, repayment terms and interest rates.

5

Establish revolving funds. It could use long-term, wholesale loans from the finance
institutions to revolve in a variety of shorter-term loans to poor households for many purposes
— not only housing. This would give households more flexibility in using finance to support
a more comprehensive and more holistic community development process.

6

Introduce subsidies. It could introduce some subsidies along the way, in order to make
the loans more accessible to the poor households. The subsidy could come in the form of
a government or donor-financed interest rate subsidy, for example, which trims the commercial interest rate to a lower rate for on-lending to the households.

26

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

4 examples of intermediary
finance institutions
This strategy is no longer new, and there are a growing number of these intermediary finance
institutions in Asian countries, which involve a wide variety of partnership structures and institutional
arrangements. Here are just a few variations on the theme of intermediaries:
Community Development Funds (CDFs). These are light, flexible and jointly managed by communities, local authorities and other local actors and are now appearing in
several Asian countries and providing much-needed credit for housing, infrastructure
and income generation to poor community organizations. CDFs function like banks, but
can work in more flexible ways to channel soft loans to the urban poor, who have been
unreachable by formal finance. These funds are all different, set up to respond to very
different needs, capacities and political contexts in their local areas. Some of these funds
have been initiated by the government, and others by NGOs or community federations,
with local governments acting as key partners. The lending capital in these funds comes
from many sources, including international donors, local and national governments, community savings and private-sector finance institutions. These funds are all closely linked
together, and there is a lot of exchange visiting and learning between them. (See Quick
Guide 6 on Community-based Organizations). Source: www.achr.net

2

CODI in Thailand: The Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) has
launched a pilot project to teach formal sector banks how to deal with poor peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cooperatives. Thailandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Government Housing Bank (GHB) has agreed to re-finance US$5.7
million of housing loans that CODI has already made to 10 community cooperatives with
good repayment records. As part of this experiment, CODI will deposit half this amount
in the GHB, as a guarantee fund. After the loans are transferred, communities will make
repayments to GHB, freeing up more CODI funds for other, riskier community housing
loans. If the pilot works, the process will be scaled up. Source: www.codi.or.th

3

SPARC in India: The Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), a
Mumbai-based NGO which supports the housing projects of the National Slum-dwellers
Federation in India, has been playing this intermediary role for a large number of large-scale
government housing projects and public sector housing loan schemes to poor communities.
These projects involve tens of thousands of housing units. Source: www.achr.net

4

CLIFF in India and Philippines: The Community-Led Infrastructure Financing Facility
(CLIFF) is a US$10 million fund set up by the UK charity Homeless International together
with DFID and Cities Alliance, which provides capital loans and loan guarantees to urban
poor organizations to facilitate urban investment loans from the local finance sector, to
finance slum rehabilitation, resettlement and infrastructure projects in partnership with local
authorities. CLIFF is being piloted in India and the Philippines. Source: www.achr.net

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

27

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

1

PHOTO: UNESCAP

There’s nothing new or innovative about
building as cheaply as possible, within ones
available means, as a way to avoid the need
to borrow or go into debt for housing. The
poor have been building their shelter like
that all along. But even these old techniques
can be improved upon, and when poor
communities are organized and supported,
they can come up with all sorts of new ways
to bring down the cost of their housing
projects.

Strategy 5:
Cost-reduction strategies

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

Probably the most immediate and pragmatic way of dealing with the lack of available housing
finance is to reduce the need for it. This is not to say that the battle to make housing finance accessible to the poor should be abandoned, but while that effort continues, there are several things
communities can do right away to lower the cost of their housing, and therefore to reduce their
need for the housing loans that are so hard to get.

1

Reducing housing costs through design
One of the best ways of reducing the cost of housing is to use a variety of design and
construction strategies which make the unit construction costs lower and make more
efficient use of the land, such as to:
Design tight housing layouts that allow as many households as possible to occupy
a limited amount of land.
Design housing units of smaller size, or units which can be expanded upwards
later.
Use community and household labour to build the houses, to reduce labour
costs.
Use alternative, recycled or cost-saving materials to bring down materials
costs (like community-made blocks or building components, recycled doors and
windows).
Buy materials collectively to get bulk discounts on bricks, blocks, cement, steel,
roofing sheets and sand.
ß Build housing collectively to make use of “economies of scale” to bring down
per-unit costs.

28

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

2

Reducing housing costs through internal cross-subsidies
Another strategy that governments, developers and communities have used to finance
low-income housing with minimal loans is to cross subsidize the low income housing
through profits from the sale of market-rate housing units within the same development.

PHOTO: ACHR

3

Reducing housing costs by building incrementally
In the absence of loans to build or buy housing on the formal market, most people living in
informal settlements build their houses incrementally, making improvements and investments
as resources are available. In this way, the development of housing is a long process, instead
of a one-time thing. And because the investments are spread out over time, they are almost
automatically linked precisely to a household’s
fluctuating resources. Some governments and
institutions have recognised the effectiveness
and appropriateness of incremental housing, and
supported the process by providing core housing,
or even developing sites-and-services schemes,
in which only plots are provided and households
can build and improve their housing gradually, at
their own pace and using their own means. (See
Quick Guide 2 on Low-income Housing)

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

29

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

The State Government of Mahrashtra, in India, has a scheme which allows un-used
building rights from sites where low-income housing is being developed to be sold to
developers to use in commercial developments on other sites (“Transfer of Development
Rights”). Some poor communities occupying prime inner-city land have built a number of
such market-rate units into their slum
redevelopment plans, and the money
they collectively earned on the rent
or sale of these units has subsidized
the cost of their own housing. Setting
up these cross-subsidy redevelopments is not easy, and often requires
bridge-financing and some technical
assistance from a partner NGO and
either the national or the local government. (See Quick Guide 3 on Land).

PHOTO: HOMELESS INTERNATIONAL

The governments of Malaysia and Philippines, for example, require that all private
sector housing developers dedicate 20 percent of the housing units they develop for sale
to the poor at government-determined prices.

8 ways to develop a better set of
housing finance strategies

1

This means designing a programme that meets
the realities of the target households, rather than
seeing which households are eligible to participate
in existing or modified financial schemes.

PHOTO: UNESCAP

Make housing finance systems that are need-driven, not supply-driven

PHOTO
32 - A

3

Many of the housing finance strategies which have
been most effective in reaching the poor include
some kind of subsidy. Subsidies, especially interest-rate subsidies and loan administration subsidies,
can help a lot to make housing finance accessible
and affordable to poor households.

PHOTO: USAID FIRE PROJECT

Consider using subsidies as tools to make finance more accessible

Support community savings as part of housing finance

4
30

The presence of strong, collective savings and credit
groups in poor communities is one of the best ways
of preparing people to manage long-term housing
loans with efficiency, fairness and transparency
— and also the best way to ensure that those loans
are repaid.

PHOTO: ACHR

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

2

It is in the nature of poverty that people’s needs
are not easily separated into compartments, and
survival often depends on a range of factors, including livelihood, housing, land tenure, basic services
and health care. When finance mechanisms take a
more flexible, more holistic view of people’s needs,
they can give poor communities a tool to resolve
many needs in addition to housing.

PHOTO: UDRC - MONGOLIA

Don’t restrict finance mechanisms to housing alone

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

5

Housing loans donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to be big, one-time things.
Smaller, more frequent loans to support incremental
housing should also be possible. Some stronger communities may be ready to redevelop their housing all at
one go, but others may prefer to do it more gradually,
and finance should be available to help both.

PHOTO: ACHR

Keep loan sizes and loan purposes flexible

6

Poor people know what they need better than any government official or finance professional. The first step is
learning to listen to them, which is something most governments and finance institutions can improve upon.
Making space for poor communities to be involved in
planning and managing any housing finance is crucial
if the system is going to be effective in reaching them
and in facilitating good repayment.

PHOTO: USAID FIRE PROJECT

Involve people in every stage of planning a housing finance strategy

8

Requiring individual land titles to get housing loans
cuts off a majority of the urban poor from accessing
finance. There are many ways poor communities can
develop internal systems to secure loans and ensure
steady repayment, including group loan management,
collective land titles and mandatory savings as part of
the loan contract.

PHOTO: ACHR

Explore innovative, community-based ways to provide loan security

QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

31

TOOLS & GUIDELINES

7

Simplifying entrenched procedures is not a simple thing
to do, given the deep culture of stiff rules and regulations and bureaucracy in most finance institutions and
government agencies, and the practices of inspection
and intimidation which often comes with finance problems. But to reach the poor and be understandable
to them, a housing finance mechanism needs to be
simple, easy, flexible and fast to respond to needs, and
to provide an atmosphere of facilitation and support for
what people are doing.

PHOTO: UN-HABITAT

Minimize rules and procedures and maximize flexibility

References

RESOURCES

PUBLICATIONS
Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), Community Development Funds, Special Issue of Housing by People in Asia, the newsletter of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), Number 14,
February 2002 accessed on 31 December 2007 from http://www.achr.net/achrdownloads.htm.
Anzorena, Eduardo Jorge S.J., 1996 (2nd edition), Housing the poor: The Asian Experience,
Pagtambayayong Foundation in Cebu, Philippines.
Anzorena, Eduardo Jorge S.J. & Fernandez, Francisco L., 2004, Housing the Poor in the New
Millennium, Pagtambayayong Foundation, Cebu, Philippines.
Bestani, Robert and Klein, Johanna, 2005, Housing Finance in Asia, Asian Development Bank,
Manila.
Daphnis, Franck and Ferguson, Bruce (eds.), 2004, Housing Micro finance: A Guide to Practice,
Kumarian Press, Bloomfield, USA.
Datta, Kavita and Jones, Gareth, 2001, Housing and Finance in Developing Countries: Invisible
Issues on Research and Policy Agendas, Habitat International, 25(3), 333-357.
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 1994, Funding Community Initiatives: The role of NGOs and other intermediary organizations in supporting low income groups
and their community organizations in improving housing and living conditions in the Third World,
Earthscan, London.
Jorgenson, N., 1977, Housing Finance for low-income groups, with special reference to developing
countries, Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies, Bouwcentrum, Rotterdam.
Lea, Michael J. (ed.), 1998, Secondary Mortgage Markets: An International Perspective, International Union for Housing Finance, Chicago.
Lea, Michael J. (ed.), 2001, International Housing Finance Sourcebook 2000, International Union
for Housing Finance and Countrywide International Consulting Services, Chicago.
McLeod, Ruth and Mullard, Kim, 2006, Bridging the Finance Gap in Housing and Infrastructure,
Urban Management Series, ITDC Publishing, U.K.
Mehta, Dinesh, 2000, The Urbanization of Poverty, Habitat Debate, Volume 6, Number 4, Nairobi.
Mitlin, Diana, 1997, Building with Credit: Housing Finance for Low-income Households, World
Planning Review, 19(1), 21-50.
Mitlin, Diana (ed.), Hi-Fi News: The newsletter of the Working Group on Housing Finance and
Resource Mobilization for the Habitat International Coalition, IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development).
Mumtaz, Babar and Ramirez, Ronaldo, 1991, Housing Finance Manual for Developing Countries:
A Methodology for Designing Housing Finance Institutions, UN-Habitat, Nairobi.
Payne, Geoffrey, 1977, Urban Housing in the Third World, Leonard Hill, London.
UK Department for International Development (DFID), 2001, Meeting the Challenge of Poverty in
Urban areas, Strategy Paper, April 2001 accessed on 31 December 2007 from http://www.dfid.
gov.uk/pubs/files/tspurban.pdf.
32

An annotated list of key websites: For an annotated list of websites which offer more
information about the key issues discussed in this Quick Guide series, please visit the Housing the Urban Poor website, and follow the links to “Organizations database”.
www.housing-the-urban-poor.net
QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 5, HOUSING FINANCE

33

RESOURCES

Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR). www.achr.net
Community Mortgage Programme (Philippines). Housing and Urban Development Coordinating
Council (HUDCC), Republic of Philippines. www.hudcc.gov.ph/index.php?id1=8
Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI), Thailand. www.codi.or.th
Environment and Urbanization, the Journal of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, U.K. All issues of this journal can be download from the Sage Publications
website. http://sagepub.com/
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC). www.sparc-india.org
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
www.unescap.org
Housing the Urban Poor: A project of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). www.housing-the-urban-poor.net
United Nations Human Settlements Programme. www.unhabitat.org

PHOTO: UNESCAP

Q U I C K
GUIDES
FOR
POLICY
MAKERS

The pressures of rapid urbanization and economic growth in Asia and the Pacific have resulted in growing
numbers of evictions of urban poor from their neighbourhoods. In most cases they are relocated to
peripheral areas far from centres of employment and economic opportunities. At the same time over
500 million people now live in slums and squatter settlements in Asia and the Pacific region and this
figure is rising.
Local governments need policy instruments to protect the housing rights of the urban poor as a critical
first step towards attaining the Millennium Development Goal on significant improvement in the lives of
slum-dwellers by 2020. The objective of these Quick Guides is to improve the understanding by policy
makers at national and local levels on pro-poor housing and urban development within the framework
of urban poverty reduction.
The Quick Guides are presented in an easy-to-read format structured to include an overview of trends
and conditions, concepts, policies, tools and recommendations in dealing with the following housingrelated issues:
(1) Urbanization: The role the poor play in urban development (2) Low-income housing: Approaches
to help the urban poor find adequate accommodation (3) Land: A crucial element in housing the urban
poor (4) Eviction: Alternatives to the whole-scale destruction of urban poor communities (5) Housing
finance: Ways to help the poor pay for housing (6) Community-based organizations: The poor as
agents of development (7) Rental housing: A much neglected housing option for the poor.

This Quick Guide 5 introduces some of the key concepts of formal housing finance and an
overview of how both the formal and informal systems of delivering housing finance work,
especially with regard to the urban poor. The guide provides insights to innovative ways in
affordable housing finance for the urban poor living in Asiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities.